Ottawa is providing $50 million to farmers, fish harvesters and other food production and processing employers to cover the costs of ensuring workers arriving from abroad properly self-isolate for the mandatory 14-day period.

Eligible employers will receive $1,500 for each temporary foreign worker, though it’s conditional on them adhering to the isolation protocols and all other public health orders. This funding will be available as long as the Quarantine Act is in force and the isolation protocol is followed.

“Temporary foreign workers have long been key to our food supply. We will work with farmers and food processing employers to ensure they get the workers they need and that plans are in place to meet mandatory isolation requirements,” Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino said in a prepared statement.

The feds are also promising to work with “interested provinces and territories” in the coming days to ensure the funding is delivered in a manner that “meets their needs and best ensures quarantine requirements are met.”

Conservative employment critic Dan Albas said Ottawa shouldn’t use government dollars to “subsidize” the use of foreign workers.

“The government must ensure that all foreign workers are tested for COVID-19 upon arrival in Canada and that they self-isolate for 14 days. While we appreciate there may be certain circumstances where employers require assistance to facilitate this, the government must not disadvantage Canadians from getting these jobs by using taxpayer dollars to subsidize foreign workers,” he said in a statement.

Albas also said the feds must ensure “workers are made aware of job openings in their area,” noting that “almost six million Canadians have lost their jobs as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.” But, he acknowledged that there will “still be areas where Temporary Foreign Workers and Seasonal Agricultural Workers are required to keep our supply chains moving.”

Monday’s announcement comes mere days after Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet raised concerns in the House of Commons about lapsed oversight to ensure temporary foreign workers are following self-isolation guidelines.

Blanchet asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the emergency sitting of the House on Saturday if these workers could be quarantined at customs upon arriving in Canada, arguing farms might not be the best-equipped places to ensure compliance with the self-isolation requirement.

In response, Trudeau vowed that his government would ensure all proper protocols are followed. He also stressed that temporary foreign workers play an important role in ensuring the security of Canada’s food supply. They were exempted from Canada’s border ban because farmers said they would face immense difficulties in keeping up production without them.

Employment and Social Development Canada last month published guidelines on temporary foreign workers arriving in Canada amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which included instructions that workers must self-isolate for 14 days upon arrival to Canada and employers must pay workers for the time they spend in self-isolation.

Syed Hussan, the executive director of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, has called on the federal government to create enforcement mechanisms for these new guidelines to ensure the rights of workers are upheld.

“We need proactive enforcement,” said Hussan, who’s also a member of the Migrant Rights Network, a coalition of self-organized groups of refugees and migrants.

“We are very far away from instituting actual protection for essential migrant workers.”

Hussan said many workers aren’t aware of their rights because the guidelines are only available in English. He said organizations like his have created education materials to share with workers so they could understand employment rights and social distancing.

“What is the point of a guideline if the workers who it’s supposed to protect doesn’t know” the guideline, he asked.